


ashes

by Liryczna



Category: Shards of the Sun
Genre: F/M, M/M, she lost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9996950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liryczna/pseuds/Liryczna
Summary: With the Prince gone, more of the staff left.





	

With the Prince gone, more of the staff left. The treacherous guards who seemed to answer more to Albany than any of them, walked away. She was left with the skeleton crew of servants, two advisers, one of which planned to try to take over soon, she was sure, and eight guards total. The City almost rose in rebellion, the merchants went after her head, and the Queen did not stop herself either. It was a nightmare, a victory turned into ash in her mouth.

 

They all loved him so much, but she saw only weakness. It was her job to remind him of his duties, to make him strong. What Oswald wanted did not matter, and he never understood that. He tried to be gentle, fair, wanted to love them as they did love him. Nobody thrived under a ruler who thought like that.

 

She used her words and used them wisely. A suggestion here, a white lie there, and the Prince was wrapped around her finger. He was weak when they crowned him, eyes still so stupidly red even though the funeral was a day before, and she took her chance. When he realized her intentions, it was already too late. So he started to shape him into the image she wished for, and startled when he resisted in the end.

 

After the ball, she saw him everywhere she went. She took down portraits, closed his personal belongings deep in the storage, did not go into the office, tried to escape. Oswald was still there, in her dreams as she was in his, but he was not trying to go for a kill. She wanted him dead, she wanted him encased in stone, she wanted him broken for everything he was not. Not hers, not anyone's to keep. Always too good, too noble, too loving. She wanted her fingers to taint him, make him hers. But Oswald wasn't. That thought made her seethe.

 

Arienne thought Oswald a toy easily discarded, a man too frail to amount to much. When the death came to her, she did not notice, blind as she ever was.


End file.
